Catalyst and Research Development Grant Project Highlight
Shedding light on the “Shadow Pandemic”: Developing a research agenda on gender-based violence during and after COVID-19
Led by Sarah Kaplan and Beverley Essue
Please briefly introduce your project and its objectives/anticipated outcomes.
Violence against cis and trans women, Two-Spirit and gender-diverse people was already a crisis before COVID-19, but the pandemic raised the visibility of this crisis and also further intensified the risk and impacts of this violence through job loss, financial insecurity, and quarantining measures. The UN characterized gender-based violence as “a shadow pandemic.”
Our project is called “Shedding Light on the ‘Shadow Pandemic’: Developing a Research Agenda on Gender-Based Violence During and After COVID-19.” The project aims to highlight the myriad impacts of gender-based violence (GBV) on communities facing marginalization, identify policy interventions to address GBV, including in future pandemics, and motivate an interdisciplinary research agenda for the future.
Our anticipated outcomes were to lay the groundwork for a research network themed on GBV and pandemic recovery at University of Toronto, and to create educational resources for the public, researchers, and policymakers to understand more about GBV.
Could you tell us about the project’s progress so far?
This funding enabled us to bring together scholars from different disciplines at the University of Toronto and community stakeholders to share their work and discuss pressing questions, creating the groundwork for a network and a renewed research agenda. With this funding, we organized and hosted a research roundtable at the University of Toronto in late 2023 where stakeholders presented new and upcoming research and insights on GBV. The topics discussed were wide-ranging and intersecting, from brain trauma that results from GBV to interventions in legal systems for GBV survivors. Participants had the opportunity to network with each other as well.
To mobilize the key messages and important research featured at the roundtable, we developed an infographic that shared some key insights, which you can find here: https://www.gendereconomy.org/gbvresearchroundtable/
A selection of messages emerging from this roundtable include the following:
- Prevention of violence requires ‘all of society’ and interdisciplinary approaches to disrupt social, cultural, political and economic norms
- Our understanding of violence must expand to account for the various forms and manifestations of gender-based violence in society (e.g., physical, sexual, emotional, economic, legal, digital/cyber) which all have damaging short and long-term impacts for individuals, families, economies and broader society
- Current investment in GBV is insufficient to enable a full spectrum of initiatives that support prevention, healing and justice for those at risk of violence and survivors
- Better data are urgently needed, especially data that reflects different lived experiences of groups most at risk of GBV (e.g., racialized, Indigenous, immigrant, non-binary and trans people)
We were able to leverage the funding from this grant as well as aligned funding from a SSHRC-funded Knowledge Synthesis Grant to support a social media campaign during the 16 Days of Activism against GBV (which is a global campaign that runs from November 25th to December 10th each year). We worked together with a number of community leaders and partners to feature the impact of various GBV-focused community initiatives using short video messages that were posted daily on LinkedIn. We launched this social media campaign with the support of, and a video recording from, Mayor Olivia Chow. The campaign can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/school/gendereconomy/posts/?feedView=videos. This campaign was also used to support a virtual launch of our report: Beyond Surviving: Examining Inequities in Access to Gender-Based Violence Support Services for Racialized Women
Finally, we published an op-ed on GBV in Healthy Debate, calling for year-long action and activism on GBV: https://healthydebate.ca/2024/01/topic/365-days-action-gender-based-violence/
Tell us about the stakeholder meeting and infographic that was developed. Could you discuss their potential impacts?
At the meeting we convened over 40 people. There were researchers from across University of Toronto who are all working on GBV-related projects, but because of different disciplines and departments may never have crossed paths. We also had a strong attendance from people in the non-profit sector who are working directly with survivors. One of the most fruitful parts of the day was seeing potential collaborations forming between attendees: there is now a basis for future multidisciplinary projects not only within the university but with community organizations as well.
Convening different stakeholders in discussion also brought out some crosscutting and nuanced themes that are important considerations for any researchers, practitioners or policymakers working on gender-based violence now and in the future. We grouped these insights together into an infographic so that they are easily accessible.
What are the next steps (perhaps both short-term and long-term) for your project?
The team is exploring external funding options for further building a GBV network at the U of T and increasing our partnered work with community organizations, including those we connected with during the workshop. We are also working on solidifying a more detailed research agenda on GBV and pandemic recovery, as there are now opportunities for multidisciplinary research projects that further explore the impacts of GBV and the pandemic across marginalized communities.
For more information about the Catalyst and Research Development Grant Projects, and to read more about this project, click here.